By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
INWOOD — If muscles could sing, what tune would they carry?
Two artists from Inwood are experimenting with electricity, translating movement into sound.
It’s both a science and a performance art. Jenny Torino and Ben Margolis have spent the last year experimenting with electromyography — a technique for measuring the electrical activity of muscles, a way to test the health of the muscles and the nerves that control the muscles.
For their latest project, the married couple tape electrodes, responsible for sensing muscle contractions, onto a performer’s skin. When the performer moves, the electrodes transmit signals to a computer that then uses a program to translate that movement into sound.
A throbbing, trance-like echo is heard as the performer moves about.
High pitches come from upper body movement while low notes emanate from movement in the lower body.
When the performer completely relaxes, no sound will be produced, said Torino, who pointed out that involuntary movements also have a similar effect.
"If someone physically moves me around, it’ll also be relatively silent because I’m not moving on my own," she explained. "It’s not my muscles that are contracting."
In essence, "you can hear a person's free will with this project," Margolis said.
Both Torino, who also works as a nutritionist, and Margolis, a fourth-year medical student, have been tinkering with circuit boards and batteries in their living room for the past nine years, hooking themselves up to experiment after experiment, coming up with new and creative ways to manipulate muscle movement.
In this latest experiment with sound, the couple teamed up with programmer Lee Azzarello and choreographer Dana Kotler.
Previously, Torino and Margolis created performances that challenge the idea of control over one’s own body. In a performance they called "Naughty, Naughty", the couple controlled each other’s muscles using remote controls.
With four electrodes attached to one arm, they sat in separate rooms and used their free arm to handle the remote control, sending small bursts of electricity into each other’s muscles to manipulate movement.
"I caressed Jenny using the arm attached to her body," Margolis said. "I logged into a part of her body and we were able to have a long distance relationship."
"We're invading the body, taking control of someone else," Torino said. We are exploring "the notion of who we are and what we have control over. We may not have as much control as we think we do."
